Why do both genius and ingenious mean the same thing? Yes, I know they are spelled differently, but there is no difference verbally between the opposite of genius and ingenious. You think the people designing the language would differentiate a little more between the two.

This was not the original material I was going to write on for the first part, but I think I better write on it before I forget it.

Washington is a state. Washington D.C. is the capital of the United States. There should be no need to add the word “state” onto the end of the first Washington. The second Washington should be appended with D.C. or simply known as D.C. in the common vocabulary.

Despite the fact that this is an easier and shorter way of doing things, people insist on doing it the hard way. Beats me why. Washington D.C. may have been around for longer but guess what? Washington, as a state, is much larger (very close to 11 times the population and almost 1100 times the square mileage).

I’ve decided, since there are times I don’t really have anything significant to say about politics or the state of the world, that I’m going to do a feature about the oddities of language.  Not just limited to English, but also a little Italian, Japanese, and a tiny bit of ASL (because these are the languages I have a working understanding of).  These will range from pondering about the oddities of how we talk, and dialect differences to just weird little things about the way language functions in society.  I already have a couple entries in mind, so the first few will come in quick succession, but I’ll try to keep this a fairly regular feature. I will take suggestions in comments, so if you have any ideas, feel free to put them in the comments section.